Paradise Glossed
by Millennialice
Summary: A young Katniss watches the Victory Ceremony of the Hunger Games.


AN: If you are reading this, that means that you didn't let the hokey title dissuade you. Kudos to you, stalwart reader!

This is just a short drabble, written to try to cure writer's block. It needs polish, which I may come back to do later.

Disclaimer: Hunger Games belongs to Suzanne Collins.

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Katniss is six and watching the Hunger Games. She waits for the victor to be crowned, as the crowd cheers. The crowd in the Capitol, anyway. People at home rarely cheer the Games, because nobody likes them much. Katniss doesn't like them either. Not at all. But she has to watch them, now that she's bigger. Everyone in District Twelve has to watch them: her mother, her father, her neighbors, and the other kids at school.

Only Prim is allowed to go to sleep. She is glad for that though, because Prim is two now and old enough to understand some of what they're watching. And it would make her cry. Not like Katniss, who has watched three games now. She doesn't even shut her eyes anymore when the blood spurts out.

She is sitting like she has sat for the past three weeks. Snuggled safe at home, with her father on one side, and her mother on the other, with a little fire going to keep the room extra bright. Her mother rocks the baby to keep her asleep when the television's sound gets too high, but it's not necessary. She and Prim had gotten a whole cup of milk each tonight, to celebrate the end of the games. Prim's had a couple of drops of sleep syrup in it. Her mother doesn't know Katniss saw, but she did. Sleep syrup is special, she knows, and her mother only uses it when it really needed, for important things. She guesses Prim not watching the games yet is one of those things.

She watches her sister now, curled up in their mother's arms. Prim almost always smiles, even in her sleep. Even though she can't see her, Katniss smiles back at her. But she feels sad. Next year, Prim will be even bigger. Next year, she'll have to watch the games too. Katniss wants to stop it. To stop Prim from getting bigger. To stop her from watching the games. But she knows if she did that, she would get in trouble, like the people she sees sometimes in the Square. She shakes her head and tells herself no. She never wants to be in trouble with the Peacekeepers. And Prim would get in trouble too. And she can't ever let that happen.

The crowd gets louder as three people come on stage. At least, she thinks they're people. Capitol people, she guesses. Her eyes fixate on their bright colors, and their bizarre clothes. The announcer man says their names, but they're not like any names Katniss has ever heard. Then another, she thinks it's a lady, steps forward. She has stripes on her face and - a tail? Katniss thinks it can't be real; it must be a Gamemaker trick. To make the ceremony more exciting, like those bugs they had had in the Games. The lady gets applause too, but it's quieter and more scattered.

A few more people come out, wave to the crowd, and step back, then the large boy comes up to the stage and the crowd roars so loud it hurts her ears. She wants to cover them, but doesn't want to be in trouble with the Peacekeepers, so she sits on her hands instead. She thinks if she listens carefully, she can hear the sounds of the crowd coming from the big screens in the Square, echoing all throughout the District. Shaking their bones.

The announcer calls the boy's name, and the crowd chants it back. She knows he is the boy from District 1. The boy raises his hands and the crowd gets louder. Katniss just wants them to stop and be quiet. He reaches back and pulls someone forward to stand with him. It's a very pretty girl who has light colored hair like him. She won the games last year, Katniss remembers, and she's his sister. They both raise their arms in victory, and the crowd goes nuts again.

They won't be quiet. They can't be quiet, no matter how hard the announcer man tries. She watches him move around on the stage and thinks that orange might be pretty, if it weren't on top of his head and on his face. The boy eventually sits down in a very big, fancy gold chair. Everyone is quiet now, to watch the video. They have been watching the games for weeks now. It feels like forever. But now they are going to watch them again, faster this time, to remind them in case anyone forgot anything.

They start with the Reaping. A girl gets chosen - Katniss remembers she and another boy killed each other after a standoff they had watched for hours - and then the boy now sitting in the chair is shown. The crowd cheers and keeps going while the other kids are shown. When they get to District 12, she sits forward and looks into the crowd to see if she's there, sitting on her father's shoulders. She's not, and the video flips back to the Capitol. She sits back, a little disappointed. She never gets to be on television.

Pretty costumes, interviews, and then they are back in the arena. Katniss watches as they follow the boy as he runs to the center and grabs a sword. There are already other kids there too, big, strong kids that let him in because he's one of them. One of the important ones. She watches as he swings the sword, gives a yell, and cuts into the head of the boy from District 12.

She doesn't close her eyes, doesn't look away, but she does move a little bit closer to her father. Because she understands now. She understands that she had lived with that boy, here in District 12, even if she didn't know him. She understands that he had gone to her school, had walked down her streets, and had stood with all the other big kids at the Reaping where she had gotten to eat part of an orange. And then he went to the Capitol. And now he was dead.

She watches the victor boy, blood spattered and chasing down a girl with a water bottle, and also sitting very still in the giant chair. He was bigger than even the biggest kid at her school. Someone had told her he had always gotten everything he wanted to eat, and she believed it. He was so strong. And mean. She rememberes again how his sword had seemed to just lift the top of the boys head away from the rest of him, and how the different parts looked like they just flew away with his sword. Like it was easy.

She watches him in the games, hunting people down with the others, an unstoppable force. Shadows, both from the television pictures and from outside her home, feel like they are creeping in her head. The boy was sitting straight in his chair, proud, safe, and strong. A victor. What would it take, she finally thought, to kill someone like that?

Her hands cover her mouth to keep the words from coming out, so no one would know she had ever thought them. It wasn't right. It was mean and it was horrible. The worst thing she had ever thought. Her mother would be scared to hear it. Her father would be so sad.

She gives a shiver and tries to make those thoughts leave her mind. Her father pulles her into his lap and moves so that they are pressed up against her mother and Prim. He rubbes her arms to get rid of the bumps that had appeared there.

She rests against them and lets their closeness and the light of their fire chase away the dark, shadowy thoughts. They watch as one of the surviving girls, driven by thirst, dies from drinking bad water. Her whole body shakes and fluid flies from her foaming mouth. Katniss decides that watching everyone die in one night is worse than dragging it out and watching them die one by one over a long time.

She turnes to the fire, choosing to watch the flames instead of one kid cutting another with a knife. One dark thought has found a place in her mind and stayed, refusing to leave. Because it's true. Just as little Prim is getting bigger, she is too. And someday, someday she will have to stand with the big kids, up in front of everyone, on television at the Reaping. Waiting for someone to go to the Capitol to die.

When she finally lookes back at the video, the boy victor stands over his latest kill, breathing hard. Katniss watches, and the boy watches as the dead girl's blood spreads, filling in all the empty spaces between the blades of grass.

What would it take, to kill someone like that?

She hopes she will never find out.

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AN: Meh, so that was it. Let me know what you thought!


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